"Problem with morale rules in Ambush Alley games" Topic

I hate posting this. I like Force on Force and Tomorrow's
War, but I've found a bad probability glitch in the morale
system.

Basically, you roll a die for each effective unit member
(units are mostly fire teams). If the number of dice
that roll 4+ exceeds those that don't, you pass the test.
If the number of dice that fail to roll 4+ equals or ex-
ceeds the number of dice that do, the test is failed.

Higher morale troops roll dice with more sides, i.e.
D6, D8, D10, D12. As a unit takes casualties, it will
be rolling fewer dice on its morale tests, as it loses effective members.

At first I thought this represented the units morale
becoming more brittle as it takes casualties, which
seems right. The trouble is that the rules used to
make the check don't do this. What they in fact do
is give units with an odd number of effectives a better
chance to pass the test than units with an even number
of effectives. Here's the probabilities:

For a morale value of D6, the odds of getting more 
passes than failures are:
1 effective:  50%
2 effectives:  25%
3 effectives:  50%
4 effectives:  31.25%
5 effectives:  50%
For D8:
1 effective:  62.5%
2 effectives:  39.1%
3 effectives:  68.36%
4 effectives:  51.88%
5 effectives:  72.48%
For D10:
1 effective:  70%
2 effectives:  49%
3 effectives:  78.4%
4 effectives:  65.17%
5 effectives:  83.7%
For D12:
1 effective:  75%
2 effectives:  56.25%
3 effectives:  84.38%
4 effectives:  73.83%
5 effectives:  89.65%

I don't think this was intentional. As a suggestion,
replace the standard morale test with an opposed test
against the firepower/attack dice of whatever caused
the morale test to be made. Morale tests made for
accidentally shooting civilians should be made with
one morale die.

Michael Hoxie

I think you will find they do know about all the maths behind it as I think I brought the same query up in playtesting FonF years ago.

I cant remember the rationale behind the choice of mechanisms but it made sense.

Im sure Shawn will be along soon enough to comment though.

That's distressing. Another possible fix would be to always roll an odd number of dice, adding one if the number of effectives is even (or subtracting if you think the numbers work out better that way). I'm interested in what Mr. Carpenter has to say as well.

I think I halfway kinda sorta perhaps remember that it was that if half your effectives got jittery they would infect the other half with the jitters as well, hence the weird seeming even number of combatant results.

Then again, I remember lots of things which are not true.

Yep. We know about this.

We've got a thread about this on our forum: link

Here's my basic response, compiled:

Yep, we're aware of the statistics.

My advice is play the game a few times and see how it works before worrying too much about the math behind it. The Morale system has definitely been around the block a few times in the last five years. (Six years now.)

Besides making ancillary rules like Shrinkage* possible, throwing one die per figure is also evocative. When players roll a handful of 5s and 6s they tend to shout out, "THESE GUYS ARE LOVING IT!" When they throw a bunch of 2s and 3s they groan, "Man, these guys are BUGGED."

If you want to use a single die for morale, that's cool with us. You'll have to kludge together a fix for Shrinkage when playing against some insurgents and there are likely to be some other morale based attributes down the road that you'll have to account for, but of the statistics rankle you that much, feel free to make what fixes you deem necessary. But again, I strongly advise you to actually play the game a few times before trying to "fix" it.

I know that it's anathema to the engineering types among us (and my day job title is Solutions Engineer, btw), but statistics don't tell the story. You have to play the game. Play the game as it was written, have a little faith in the design, and see if it feels right and is fun to play.

I know that the answer above will annoy some folks, but we feel it does what we want it to the majority of the time and evokes the group mentality of a unit more effectively (and graphically) than a single die roll.

That said, if you purely hate it and can't get past the fact that there's not a smooth continuum of statistics, feel free to make adjustments!

Cheers,

Shawn.

------------------------------
*Shrinkage is a morale effect that causes figures who roll a 1 on their Morale die to beat feet even though the rest of the unit stands. Commonly applied to insurgents operating in their own back yards.

@Dynaman, yes, there have been studies on optimum group sizes that show that groups composed of odd numbers of individuals are easier to motivate than even numbers of individuals, but honestly, we do it the way we do it for game play experience reasons – it feels right to most players.

I'm with Shawn on this. For me a miniature wargame is about the story and drama of the game. And while statistically it would seem that odd number units will fare better it balances out. Because at some point the law averages is going to make that odd numbered unit an even numbered unit and the disadvantage cancels the advantage in my thinking. Perhaps that is not hard math but to me the Ambush Alley engine "feels" right and I have played a ton of games of both Ambush Alley and Ambush Valley and now starting to gear up with Tomorrow's War and they have all been hard fought fun games with lots of cheering, hooting and hollering on both sides of the table. The system makes for plausible outcomes and that is fine with me.

>Another possible fix would be to always roll an odd number of dice, adding one if the number of effectives is even

Or roll your dice, if the results come out even (2 pass, 2 fail, etc.) roll a tie breaker. (or is that what you are suggesting?)

The tie breaker idea is a better version of what I was proposing. I like it better than the single die roll alternative since it still gives an advantage to larger units.

whitemanticore makes a good observation that units will have odd and even numbers as they degrade so there's no built in permanent bias to the rules. Shawn's point about giving the rules a chance is well taken.

Okay. I'll probably go with pigbear's idea of rolling one
die less than the number of effectives in the unit if the
unit has an even number of men. That's probably the
easiest, and lets the shrink rule stay unmodified.

Another idea would be to apply morale results to individual
soldiers rather than units. Then you'd probably have to
come up with a rally roll to motivate the pinned soldiers,
more trouble than it's worth.

Michael

I have an idea. Why not simply roll morale dice according to the confidence level of the unit?

High Confidence: Roll morale with 3 dice (or 5 dice if it's easier).

Confident: Roll morale with 4 dice.

Low Confidence: Roll morale with 2 dice.

Gives you a nice curve for the odds according to how confident the units happen to be. With this system I'd definitely remove the "immune to suppression" part of High Confidence.

Shrinkage is affected, but either it's not going to be a problem, or you roll shrinkage dice separately from the morale result dice.

No offense, but I like the fact that shrinkage is handled at the same time as regular morale. Why have an extra step?

I could see the tie-breaker idea… lemme read my TW again… that changes the point where troops are Pinned.

Troops are pinned when the number of failures are equal or greater than the number of successes. A second pinned result pushes the unit back.

There is no extra step. Just roll the shrinkage dice separately at the same time. Just an idea, anyway.

You could devise stuff like high confidence units being rounded up to the next odd number, low confidence units rounded up to the next even number, but I don't know what you'd do with just confident guys then. I guess one or the other as well.

Off the top of my head, what not change the rule to:

"roll a die for each effective unit member. If the number of dice that roll 4+ EQUALS OR EXCEEDS those that don't, you pass the test."

what does the math on that work out to?

I think that is the rule for irregulars/insurgents at the moment JUdge Doug, so I'd be interested in the maths as well.

"roll a die for each effective unit member. If the number of dice that roll 4+ EQUALS OR EXCEEDS those that don't, you pass the test."

what does the math on that work out to?

Haven't done the math, but off the top of my head I would think that it would still leave the basic issue – just that it would now be on the even rather than odd number of effectives.

OK, I ran the maths for the situation where the number of successes needs to be equal or greater for the unit to pass. The probabilities for uneven number of effectives did not change, but the ones for the even number of effectives got significantly better:

For D6:

1 effective: 50%
2 effectives: 75%
3 effectives: 50%
4 effectives: 68.75%
5 effectives: 50%

For D8:

1 effective: 62.5%
2 effectives: 85.94%
3 effectives: 68.36%
4 effectives: 84.84%
5 effectives: 72.48%

For D10:

1 effective: 70%
2 effectives: 91%
3 effectives: 78.4%
4 effectives: 91.63%
5 effectives: 83.7%

For D12:

1 effective: 75%
2 effectives: 93.75%
3 effectives: 84.38%
4 effectives: 94.92%
5 effectives: 89.65%